


it's all just seafoam and brine

by reflectionslie (fallsink)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, lapslock, mermaid au, shark merman!sungjin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 02:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14149971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallsink/pseuds/reflectionslie
Summary: love the sea and it will love you back





	1. you.

there is no sound beneath the waves, except the gush of motion of the unyielding force around you. and except your panicked heart as you struggle against the undertow.

**  
**battling for air is quickly sapping all your strength. the storm is a lot worse than you thought, otherwise you wouldn’t have ventured out alone, let alone this far. much much worse and even trying to catch on to the broken pieces of your boat is hopeless this far from the surface. **  
**

but you can’t die, not here not now, not even in the place you love most. not like this. you fight off your jacket and shirt but you’re still burdened by your own dead weight, panic so cold and heavy. the rest of the air in your chest is escaping you too fast, faster and faster until…

suddenly, all at once, everything starts moving in slow motion. you try blinking away the coils of black threatening at the edge your vision, instead trying to focus on something moving beyond your reach. it’s almost human, yet too too sleek, something off about it moves…

the last thing you see is the glitter of something so so blue before the inky darkness collapses on you.

 

* * *

 

 

then there is solid ground beneath you and you’re on your arms and knees heaving lungfuls of seawater onto the sand, coughing, coughing so hard that you almost see stars.

between these gasps and coughs, with more than just seawater slipping your face, you feel something so warm moving up and down your back. but it also feels like whomever – or whatever – is touching you through layers of fabric. comforting.

soon you’ve steadied enough to sit down in the sand, face upturned to the sun you never thought you’d be so glad to see. deep deep ageless breaths. then you remember your manners and turn to thank your savior –

all words are lost in transit.

you know exactly what he is, you’ve heard enough legends and read enough lore to know that he is a merman. yet, even with all that knowledge, it doesn’t prepare you to see this embodiment of the sea.

it’s hard to know where to look first. his tail is sleek, powerful, with bladelike fins, and scaleless – a shark’s, not a fish. you suppose there are varieties of merpeople, as there are colors of the rainbow.

the upper part of his body is the same, parts broken by a ragged waistband of what looks like fabric woven from seaweed and various objects. even with varying lengths of old scars and tattoos making tapestry of his arms and chest, everything about him is smooth and precise, and without a doubt, deadly if provoked.

this ends, however, with his face. moreso, his expression, because his sharp jawline and proud nose still boast of many battles where he has risen victorious.

but it’s his clever eyes – the mysterious gray of the fog that drifts upon morning surfaces – that have you so lost.

he says your name and it rattles something in the back of your brain. it sounds like a distant memory cast out from an island, now long out of sight.

then you remember that you had heard it often when you were swimming or boating alone this summer. you always thought someone was watching you and it had comforted you, because it felt like the sea itself was cooing to you, your name a repeating lullaby as it made sure you made it home each night.

maybe, just maybe…

he continues to call your name in a way only lovers do, so tenderly that you wish you knew how and what he knows. except you’re already lost in the way you watch his lips move. his gray eyes are depthless but it reflects a blue so deep that it makes you feel closer to the sky.

“are you hurt?” he asks.

you shake your head, rising chest slowing to a breathable rhythm. he still looks concerned, but less so as he settles into the spot next to you.

a glint of brilliant blue glitters against his chest and you see a necklace of something you don’t know settling against his collarbones. you wonder if this is the blue you had seen before you lost consciousness and you wonder if it is what’s responsible for the blue that’s reflected in his eyes.

you can feel his stare passing over you, as if he’d rather be using his hands to check for hurts or just the simple joy that you’re alright.

when you meet his gaze, a thousand questions rising up to be known, he must have taken your expression as confusion because he lets out a soft laugh that is grated all around the corners, in a way only the sea can erode at.

you jump slightly as he tucks a strand of sandy hair behind your ear, his skin briefly touching yours. it’s hotter than the sun glaring from the other side of the cliff.

“I breathe breath back into good sailors,” he explains. he says it so offhandedly that you question if you had mistaken the tenderness that you heard before when he said your name. “because you must have someone waiting on a cliff for your return.”

thinking back, you wish you could have replied then. resurfaced from the blueness of him and told him it all.

but he’s looking everything like a captain watching his ship sail off without him, stranded and brokenhearted. and you didn’t answer soon enough.

“go home, darling,” he says. “your love awaits.”

he’s turning and diving back into the waves in one fluid movement, gone before you can say anything else.

but what could’ve you said, when all you could think to all that is,

“but I’m already home.”

 

* * *

 

 

you start writing messages in the sand after that night.

every evening, you stroll on the glinting sand, scattering footprints among the stranded foam, seaweed, shells, and sea glass. aching with the words you could have said.

you wonder if you had imagined it all.

or maybe you really had drowned, because these days have been full of ocean spray and brine. the rocking of the crashing waves and the sinking depths.

but you do know he saved you, because nothing else could have breathed such life back through you without losing itself in the process. the shipwrecks and treasures all on that sigh between your lips. you know it, deep in the marrow of your bones, even if you didn’t know his name.

 

* * *

 

 

but today you must leave.

you know this day would come, but it’s so so bittersweet. the smell of gasoline as you rev your beat-up car is an insult to the ocean air, but you’re turning the radio up high too to drown out the sound of waves before you lose all motivation to leave.

you love the sea, and you know it loves you back.

but there’s nothing left for you here. all just beached dreams and skeletons of hope drying underneath the sun.

so you drive away without another look back. you leave nothing behind.

except, far far away where the seaside cliffs where the shadows can’t reach it, you leave one last message in the sand.

_I love you_

maybe you’ll forever and always yearn for the restless sea because you lost yourself in it – in  _him_ – that day.

 

 

(the tide ebbs and rises, ebbs and rises its way to the message in the sand you leave behind, before cascading down upon it.

but the sea always leaves gifts in its wake. except this time it’s not foam, seaweed, shells, or glass washed up against the shore.

_I love you too_ )


	2. him.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> him.

“you let her go?”

back beneath the waves where the water is darker and the currents don’t move as much, sungjin nods numbly. he can feel younghyun and jaehyung sharing glances between each other behind him, but he’s too busy staring up at the sunlight playing at the surface, lost loss in his expression. his tattered fins flutter solemnly in the underwater flux, even his sleek shark skin doesn’t glimmer like it usually does.

it’s like he’s grieving with his whole body.

“but that was your first kiss…” jaehyung starts, his lionfish tail quills along his skin and tangled in his hair quiver with tension.

“I know,” sungjin says, instantly regretting the sharpness in his voice. he tries a grin that’s leagues from gray eyes. “I knew when I made the choice.”

stories tide, fading and renewing through the ages, until some become legends. but sometimes, legends are not complete tales, missing undercurrents of deeper meanings and lost symbolism.

sea people never forget, even when humans omit and move on, and especially stories about themselves. they know their powers, most of all their healing tears and their ability to give breathe back new life.

nothing that plays with fate and time comes without a price. these kisses are singular and require the ocean children to gift part of their own hearts into their chosen body. only mermaids can rebeat a silenced heart by sharing part of their own, and only once.

thus, they are forever and always yearning for a half themselves that they had given away, yearning for whomever they save.

most sea people are hesitant at best to share their kisses, most don’t gift them at all. those who do pick, take great pains to make sure that the person they kiss will wake and kiss them back. so, that their hearts won’t stay broken and aching.

if only you had known that he had lost just as much into you, as you had in him. if not more.

younghyun breaks the silence first. “do you think she’ll come back?”

sungjin thinks about the carved words in the sand, the ones you had left behind. not as a declaration with a question, hoping for a reciprocated answer, but as a simple statement of a simpler truth.

he thinks about his gifts of shells and glass on the shore and loving the way you had trailed among them, and his reply.

all of it this – quiet, warm, and full of promise.

and he thinks about how anything taken by the sea once always comes back, someway, somehow, whether they know it or not…

“maybe,” he replies, a soft sunrise smile rising on his lips. “maybe someday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr original](http://daystring6.tumblr.com/post/169745075186/)

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr original](http://daystring6.tumblr.com/post/162804193341)


End file.
